As a New Testament teacher at Cambridge University for 45 years, more than half spent in the most prestigious biblical chair in the country, Charlie Moule, who has died aged 98, became a distinguished scholar and influential teacher, and was always the devoted pastor with a remarkable gift for friendship.

His tenure as Lady Margaret's professor of divinity (1951-76) spanned a period of university expansion and new opportunities for international cooperation after an insular period.

As a doctoral supervisor and leader of the famous seminar established by F C Burkitt, Moule did more than anyone to make Cambridge the natural training ground for future university teachers in his field. Equally significant, he influenced generations of clergy through three decades of ever-evolving lecture courses on the theology and ethics of the New Testament and a long association with Cambridge's liberal evangelical theological college, Ridley Hall, at a critical time.

Moule was born in the Chinese city of Hangchow (now Hangzhou, near Shanghai), the third son of missionary parents, and brought up in the compound where his grandfather was still bishop of mid-China. After the first world war, the family returned to the vicarage of Damerham, Hampshire, and Charlie attended Weymouth college. He won a classical scholarship to Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1927, and after graduating with a first was ordained at Ridley Hall in 1933. After a year as tutor, and a second curacy at Rugby, he returned to Ridley in 1936 as vice-principal. In 1944, he became dean of Clare College and university assistant lecturer, a post he held until 1951.

As a life fellow and bachelor don, Charlie continued to live in college as professor, supporting his remarkable successors as dean, from John Robinson through Maurice Wiles, Mark Santer and Arthur Peacocke to Rowan Williams. Combining sociability and charm with Bonhoeffer's "secret discipline", he was emphatically a college man, for many years secretary of the Clare Association. Emmanuel College made him an honorary fellow in 1972, and, in 1988, Cambridge added an honorary DD to that received from St Andrew's university 30 years previously. He was made CBE in 1985.

A fellow of the British Academy from 1966 and president of the International Society of New Testament Studies (1967-68), he was awarded the academy's Burkitt medal in 1970. On his retirement in 1976, he also ended 21 years as canon theologian of Leicester, but returned to Ridley as New Testament tutor until 1980. He moved to Pevensey, Sussex, until in 2003 infirmity prescribed a residential home in Dorset, close to his family.

Charlie's undergraduate tutors had persuaded him to concentrate on the language of the New Testament, a project that eventually yielded an inaugural lecture and An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek (1953). Meticulous exegesis is characteristic of his whole oeuvre, but his interests were always primarily theological. Here he combined faithfulness to his evangelical roots with a remarkable independence of thought.

Largely self-taught in theology, he belonged to no school, but his admiration for CH Dodd, also a classicist by training, and close collaboration with him as a translator of the New English Bible, signals an affinity. Both saw the gospel enshrined in the life and ministry of Jesus, and appealed to history for its elucidation and defence. This confidence that historical study would support Christian faith, including belief in the Resurrection, allowed Moule to remain steadily orthodox in the 1960s, when some of his colleagues were more critical of doctrinal tradition. His courtesy and engaging openness disarmed the many who disagreed with him.

His first book to attract a wide international readership was The Birth of the New Testament (1962, revised 1981), a mature synthesis of investigations into the church's worship, self-awareness and use of the Jewish scriptures. Its balanced and sober judgments are refreshing when re-read in a more sceptical and fragmented age.

This masterpiece was followed by The Phenomenon of the New Testament (1967) and several substantial articles, later collected in Essays in New Testament Interpretation (1982) and Forgiveness and Reconciliation (1988). Both collections and a third, prizewinning book, The Origin of Christology (1977), point to a primary focus on christology, the Spirit, and salvation.

In speaking of the atonement, Moule preferred personal to sacrificial or cultic terms, and saw punishment as always restorative or deterrent, never retributive. He opposed uncritical views of scripture and doubted whether "inspiration" was a helpful way of describing its indispensability.

It is, however, the person, as much as the work, that will be remembered. The transfer of the label "Holy Mouley" (from his great-uncle, the first principal of Ridley and conservative scholar bishop of Durham) to the modest, approachable and pastoral professor, had substance as well as affection in it. Those who heard him preach or lecture sensed deep seriousness, humanity and devotion, but in conversation it was the light touch and puckish sense of humour that stood out.

A love of the countryside led to Man and Nature in the New Testament (1964), and his collaboration with colleagues produced Miracles (1965) and (with Ernst Bammel) Jesus and the Politics of his Day (1982). In the faculty, his wisdom usually prevailed, showing gentleness and humility are not to be confused with weakness.

· Charles Francis Digby Moule, priest and theologian, born December 3 1908; died September 30 2007